Well, I did not see this coming. I can only see three outcomes for this game if it will be good: an amazing combination of Diablo-style dungeon crawling and horror gameplay, another Diablo cone, or a game that is just so bad at doing what it wants to do that it's fun to play.

The concept is cool I think and while i'm most likely going to buy it, I just kinda hate that it's a Silent Hill game. I predict that Silent Hill goes RTS next. We already have an FPS too on the iPod. It was "ok".

Wound up getting a Vita today through fortunate circumstance. Downloaded the Demo off the PSN out of curiosity and I have to say this is actually kind of fun. Probably even more so as I had no information/expectation going into it. The music and atmosphere is great and it doesn't look like the game will be a complete pushover either. Despite the story being kind of bare bones I think that actually works to it's benefit.

So after watching my wife play the demo I want to double post a bit here and try to stir up some discussion about the Karma mechanic and see what people think of it so far.

Short Version: The Karma system is almost just what it sounds like on the tin. It's a quasi-morality story system that also happens to double as a Light/Dark Force Powers system. There's Blood at one extreme, Neutral in the middle, and Light at the other end of the spectrum. You can perform special attack with enough combo'd hits (not as action-y as you'd think from the sound of it) that're influenced by where this meter currently tips. However the big change that seems to come from this system is how it interacts with the Book of Memories. Karma is changed by collecting either 'Blood' or 'Light' pools of blood that monsters randomly drop or from interactive rooms called 'Possession Rooms' where you have to quickly decide how to interact with the situation presented before you. Your actions will tip the Karma meter heavily either towards Blood, Neutral, or Light depending on what you do.

*Demo Spoilers Ahoy*

So when you play through the demo the memory your character decides to change seem to revolve around them self and a guy called Derek. Through what I can put together, in the past Derek got a job promotion you really wanted; so you re-write the book to have you get that promotion instead. When I played through the demo my meter stayed fairly close to neutral with a moderate start towards the Blood side. In this fashion I discovered through notes and the TV broadcasts that Derek had now been framed for stealing cash from his job and subsequently fired; giving you that promotion you wanted.

I thought 'Cool; so the BoM in this game is basically a monkey's paw.'

Then my wife played the game. She went heavily towards the light side and immediately I had my attention fully yanked in by the game during the first broadcast; which was drastically different from my own. In her playthrough Derek had instead been offered a better job than the promotion and moved onto to take it, giving you the promotion you wanted in a far less unfortunate way for Derek.

This...is actually kinda interesting I think. Not exactly the most 'unique' mechanic but I really like how it ties into both character roleplay and game mechanics (because you have to be super careful what blood stains you do collect if you want a certain result). I have to wonder if the endings are tied to which fate you created for which memories and if certain BoM unlocks are tied to your decisions (not present in the demo; but the shop keeper mentions you can use the game's currency to re-write the BoM, leading me to how that'll work in the full game).

Anyone else kinda stoked after trying out that part of the game for themselves?

Just a general note of warning; I'd personally write this one off as something only to be bought when the price goes waaaaay down. There are just too many small things piled into the game that add up to be one big detraction. I've been playing it off and on since Tuesday and really I have no more desire to finish a playthrough.

-There's no real sense of 'character progression'. The only element to the storytelling is the Notes and Broadcasts which 'show' (it's all written and audio) how the memories are being changed as you progress through the dungeon. There's one big problem though...it's 'practically' random.

It doesn't matter if your Karma meter is full Blood, Light, or Steel. The Notes you pick up can be anything. You can be full Blood and still be getting Light-aligned Notes. This is because there are a ton of factors that go into what determines if you're 'really' Blood or Steel. Including what freaking weapon you happen to be killing enemies with. Which is a big deal since you really have to take what you can get due to how fast weapons break in this game. Supposedly you can retry dungeons and replay them over and over until you get the result you want but it's just a ton of pointless busy work.

However because there are no cut scenes (so far) outside the opening dungeon events there's just no real connection to the story for me to feel these effects. This isn't like Dark Souls where the gameplay is engaging enough to drive the sparse story (which can then be fleshed out through the item descriptions and load screens if you're really, really curious about world lore). This is a far lesser game leaving me with a '...where's the meat?' feeling everytime I try to get my fill.

-Mechanically this game has serious issues. I'll give the two biggest examples I currently have as the worst offenders.

First, the possession rooms. What I thought was going to be an interesting mechanic that helped flesh out your character through potential morality choices is turning out to just be a very boring, repetitious minigame played over and over with a new skin. It doesn't even occur often enough for you to 'enjoy' it. So far I've encountered two across three dungeons. They've both followed this pattern:

Enter the room.Want Light points? Sit there and do nothing.Want Blood points? Run up to everything that flashes or moves and attack it.Want Steel points? Try to do Blood but fail to 'beat the clock'.

It gets old even by the second time and really does nothing to hook me in.

Second, the dungeon and just general 'concept' design is very poorly executed. This is one of those games where the 'difficulty' is artificial. Starting around Floor 6 my number of deaths went up quite a bit simply because the developers decided that the best way to challenge the gamer was to stuff rooms to the brim with a number of monsters that makes it virtually impossible to dodge every incoming attack. I have a Strength/Vitality build specifically designed to soak up as much of these melee hit nightmares as possible and I can still find myself in near-death situations more often than I'd like. Because the game does not auto-save any of your progress you pretty much have to rush through the dungeon, find the save room, then spend 3+ minutes walking back to it and another 3+ back to where you were everytime you're near death to avoid repeating 10+ minutes of gameplay.

The design flaws become even more apparent with a boss called the Light Guardian. Good bosses will challenge your knowledge of the game and test every skill you've needed to hone to press this far inwards. You'll learn very quickly that in this game touching pretty much anything hurts you. Projectiles hurt you. Getting too close to a foe hurts you (because of how fast they can lash out). So how do you defeat the final stage of the Light Guardian? By throwing every ounce of logic the game has been pounding into you and directly standing in the line of one of his projectiles to hit it right back at him.

In other games it sounds like a simple enough solution but it's so counter-intuitive to every instinct the game has programmed you with up til this point that I honestly couldn't figure it out on my own. The fight designer pretty much has no idea how the mind-flow of a player works in a dungeon crawl environment and it felt like an extremely cheap way to spike the game's already high death count (again, not in a 'good' way like Dark Souls).

it's just...bleh. Not a game that encourages you to come back for more. ~_~

Difficulty scales with multiple players as I understand it. So more people =/= easier and single player =/= harder, technically.

However due to the way some creatures behave I'd say the game is probably more tolerable with more people. I.E: There's a creature called the 'Needler'. Basically it's all but immune to damage from frontal attacks, you have to circle around behind it and then hit. Problem with this is four fold.

One, it circles 'just' fast enough that you have to go a loooooong way around to get to that sweet spot.

Two, the developer loves to place these in smaller rooms and have them spawn near the walls. So odds are it'll turn just fast enough to make it impossible to reach that weak point without baiting it out to the middle of the room; which takes a while due to slow move speed.

Three, the developer also loves to pile in other monsters in this room and send Needlers in pairs. So trying to circle around them while everything is dog piling you is pointlessly frustrating.

Four, you can't ignore the Needlers and attack everything else first. Needlers have very long range with their jabs, can lunge-jump, and all their attacks do very high (considering how often you have to fight them) damage; even with a high Vit build (the stat specifically designed to reduce melee attack damage in this game).

Now if you had at least one more player in theory someone could bait the Needler's attention while the other circles around for the easy kill. But I don't know if the multi-player difficulty scaling does anything to complicate that.